If you were a confident Zach Bogosian owner last season, you were likely perplexed as to why the young Thrashers defenseman could only rack up 23 points in 81 games this season after a solid 19 points in 47 games during his rookie campaign. He’s a powerplay staple and a minute eater on a team that, at the time, had one of the best peripheral scorers of the game. So what gives?

Turns out, in fact, that “Bogo” suffered from a severe wrist injury that plagued him for the latter half of the season and when you break down the stats, you can see why. Coach John Anderson tells us that Bogosian incurred the injury in December, but never missed a game due to the injury (the only game Bogosian missed was an unrelated thumb injury). In September and October, Bogosian racked up a solid 8 goals (2 PP) and 4 assists in 24 games but only managed 11 more points for the rest of the season. In his last 27 games of the season, he only gave us 1 goal and 2 assists.

Looks like Bogosian is dedicating this offseason to fully recovering from wrist surgery and give the kid credit for playing through the injury and keeping it very quiet while he did.

Draft him confidently next year as he could very well be one of the best steals of your draft.